It is known that Cell Global Identity (CGI) is a standard identifier for mobile phone cells, providing means to geographically locate connected mobile phones. If a cell phone is connected to a GSM network then the position of that particular cell phone can be determined using CGI of the cell which is covering that cell phone. The battery life of a cell phone is affected when the phone changes cells in idle mode because in-between cells, the phone enters ‘Searching’ mode. In other words, when a phone cannot determine its Cellular Global Identity, the phone interactively checks other frequencies so it uses more battery than if it simply monitors the broadcast channel of a cell.
In some embodiments, wireless device or user equipment can receive information from the network because the base station (the antenna) sends a broadcast signal that contains all the CGI information. On the other hand, the user equipment only receives and decodes the broadcast signal, it doesn't have to send any signal to the network. So the network only generally knows where the device is because the device only contacts the network when it changes from one Location Area (LA) to another. An LA covers a group of cells.
When someone calls the phone, the phone will receive a paging message (in a signal broadcast by the cell) and then the phone will contact with the cell to establish a connection.
When the network planning of a system is not sufficiently tuned (especially when handover zones between cells are incorrectly planned) or when IRAT cell resection parameters in idle mode are wrong, a phone in idle mode may oscillate from one cell to another or into and out of the same cell. This has an impact on battery life as the phone spends more time looking for available cells compared to when it stays on a given cell.
It is known that a phone in idle mode doesn't report to the network. Therefore, network operators cannot directly determine where customer phones may be experiencing multiple idle mode handover.
It is known that data collection agents automatically collect data on a wireless device and upload it when indiscernible to its user. A data collection profile defines data to be collected and a trigger. When the trigger is sensed, data is collected according to the data collection profile. The collected data can be uploaded immediately, or stored for some period of time before being transmitted to a collection system. Data may be collected for a brief time before, during and after sensing the trigger and may be uploaded to a system.
It is known that a common source of customer dissatisfaction and ensuing churn is attributed to “poor” battery life of the handsets.
Frequently the proposed solution is to offer to exchange phones for the customer but devices returned for diagnosis exhibit a high probability of “no fault found”. The replacement devices often exhibit the same or other failures which lowers customer satisfaction with the product offering and as soon as practicable, the customer departs for another vendor. Thus the cost of acquiring new customers is burdened by the cost of replacing lost customers.
For the purpose of this application we define the term extent to have a meaning of a time period between a begin time and an end time. A phone may stay on a cell during an extent during which it is associated with a CGI. When the phone is not on a specific cell it may be in an extent whose state is “Searching” or “No Service”. Other extents may be periods during which the CGI information cannot be decoded e.g. Not Available, or Not Accessible
Thus it can be appreciated that what is needed is a way to detect a misconfiguration of a wireless network which leads to poor battery life because phone in idle mode are excessively switching from one cell to another. Changes to the network service or to the phone itself could accommodate or remediate the misconfiguration.